also despite complaining about sargon a bunch in arknights and how it plays into existing racist tropes about africa and the middle east (and mesoamerica) part of why i take this cagier approach to it is because you can see a fairly blatant trajectory IN hypergryph's writing about Sargon where they do seem to be responsive to the criticism they get
great chief returns depicts a bunch of savage, violent tribalistic warriors who are framed as Needing To Modernize and the process of doing so involves destroying sacred sites. this is INCREDIBLY fucking bad for how it dehumanizes and erases their culture and frames them as in Need Of Enlightenment. fuck GCR. it's also mesoamerica for some reason. and also the men are full anthros but the women are conventionally attractive kemonomimi. about the only upside is that we get Flint, the first woman in Arknights to have both dark skin and dark hair.
operation originium dust, walk in the dust, and Fire Within The Sand show us a version of sargon that is considerably more sympathetic to its inhabitants, and in both cases the Columbians are heavily involved in WHY things have gone to shit. but it flattens the perspective of the people living there to mostly just victims struggling to survive; their culture is implied but we don't really get the impression they have anything to LIVE for, and this kind of reductive depiction of africa and the middle east is also really common. the vouivre alliance as depicted in Records of Originium Blacksteel falls into this category as well.
ideal city doesn't really focus much on acahualla but it DOES give us flint's operator record, which actively rebuts the points originally brought up by great chief returns. flint and chiave's gang actively exploit the racist beliefs of the "civilized" sargonians looking to exploit their new alliance with durin. it's a really neat story... but it's also undercut by the fact that we keep cutting back to acahualla with the goofy dumbass crocodile-men being played for laughs.
Tales Within The Sand is ANOTHER mixed bag but one of the things that stuck out to me was that we finally got a focus on both the happiness and culture people had; we got a vibe for what ordinary life was like. sure, the lords ameer are exploitative, but that's kinda just what Terra is LIKE. but the individual nodes have festivals, food, and loads of other little joys. kestrel joins flint in our list of dark-skinned/haired women.
Adventure That Cannot Wait For The Sun and Medjehtiqedti Bound are kinda notable because... we FINALLY get to see the "civilized" sargon that Inam comes from. like, it's a modern sargonian city, no-one is fucked over by constant war, no-one is engaged in mindless violence against each other for shits and giggles. the relationship between egypt and both the rest of africa and the middle is fairly complex and i'm not gonna pretend i can speak for their perspective. but despite the clusterfuck of their relationship with minos, AND the mess that comes of arknights geopolitics mostly being inspired by the early 20th century but making the egypt analogue ottoman AND pharaonic (resulting in a version of egypt that can neither engage with the modern muslim experience OR the experience of colonialism under the british that characterizes the early 20th century particularly with regards to the denial of heritage egyptomania resulted in)... It's A Really Fucking Nice City. it's modern, it's clean, it's peaceful. it is finally the context Arknights has been implying since the story started - Sargon Is Just Another Part Of Terra, with intercity net and plumbing and gay nepo baby catgirls.
it is absolutely something that needs to be criticized, and i think arknights unwillingness RETCON is one of its major weaknesses esp. with stuff like Saluzzo's first name and Acahualla, but we can see a clear trajectory here where HG seems to be learning and improving. so like. we absolutely SHOULD keep criticizing the depictions of both sargon and minos.
but in this case, it's because i think our criticism WORKS. and i think, as long as we keep pushing back, HG and Arknights will keep getting better.
